Trump voters supporting establishment in down ballot races?

Erick Erickson:
Trump’s voters tell us America has gone off the rails. They tell us that America is no longer great and they want to make it great again. They tell us the problem is Washington. They tell us the problem is both parties. They finger the Republican Establishment in Washington as chief instigator of all the problem along with Barack Obama. The two are collaborators on tearing down America.

They are going to stand with Trump to make America great again. They are going to clean up Washington.

But they aren’t.

There have been a series of primary challenges thus far in states with Republican challengers targeting incumbent Republican establishment members. And all of them are losing. The Trump voters are either voting for Trump and ignoring down ballot races (a warning sign for November with Trump as the nominee) or they are voting for the very establishment incumbents they think are harming America.

On top of that, they are assailing the conservative organizations that have been beating incumbent establishmentarians. The Club for Growth, Heritage Action for America, Madison Project, Senate Conservative Fund, Freedom Works, etc. have all been fighting incumbents and have all been pushing pro-freedom conservative challengers. But because they are not down with Trump explicitly or in some cases are outright opposed, the Trump voters have labeled these groups establishment.

At the end of the day we are left with a deep irony within Trump voters’ views. The groups most likely to fight the establishment Republicans who Trump voters hate are being labeled as establishment for also opposing Trump. So we’re left with the actual Republican Establishment and Trump voters working together to shut out conservative reformers who are championing the very causes Trump voters claim they believe in.
...
I have never thought Trump was a rational choice so it is not that surprising that his voters are not rational when it comes to "fighting the establishment."   For them, the "establishment" is just a convenient pejorative they use for anyone who disagrees with them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more